UTAH UNREST
The author of ‘Black Klansman’ takes on Salt Lake City’s Bloods vs. Crips wars
FACED with the dilemma of devoting their lives to their religion or firebombing the homes of rivals, Mormon gangbangers decided they could do both.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, youngsters in Salt Lake City engaged in vicious beatdowns, stabbings and drive-by shootings over drug-trade turf and in solidarity with members of their crews.
Some of these hooligans did so while carrying pocket-size copies of The Book of Mormon in their pockets.
How did Utah’s capital city — known for snow-capped mountains, Karl Malone and John Stockton pick-and-rolls and being a hub of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — become a hotbed for criminality?
When Ron Stallworth arrived there in 1986 to launch and lead an antigang police unit, he saw the answer clear as day: Southern California Crips and Bloods were trekking nearly 700 miles to sell crack cocaine to the Beehive State’s devout, mostly white inhabitants and recruit followers into their gangs.
“When I and others in the criminal justice field attempted to sound the alarm about the emerging threat from street gangs, the church would not accept that its faith was failing their children,” writes Stallworth in his memoir, “The Gangs of Zion: A Black Cop's Crusade in Mormon Country” (out Sept. 17, Legacy Lit/ Hachette).
“No one was willing to see past their religion and accept the fact that when not attending sacrament meetings, these children were throwing Molotov cocktails through windows," he adds.
Stallworth had already padded his law enforcement résumé after successfully infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado Springs, Colo., in 1979 — an undertaking he recalls in vivid detail in his first book, 2014’s “Black Klansman.” (John David Washington depicted him in the Spike Lee-directed film adaptation, “BlacKkKlansman,” released in 2018.)
HIS newest hardcover tells of the ways his black and blue identities would often clash in the minds of others. While Stallworth’s race allowed him to easily blend in as an undercover cop, he writes that he was also undercut by coworkers, distrusted by civilians who looked like him, and provoked by racists who didn’t.
Yet he never backed down from a challenge. Stallworth’s stories read like excerpts from the script of “Shaft,” as he regularly
emphasized his point by testing the limits of police protocol and ending conflicts with a quip.
Outnumbered by racists at a bar, he once responded to a skinhead’s slurs and threats by propositioning his mother — and then pulling out his Glock.
When a Crip began spreading lies about having beat up Stallworth, the officer challenged the much-larger man to a fistfight until he stood down — an effective bluff that was anything but by-the-book.
It was that doggedness and bold behavior that helped Stallworth on his mission to solve Salt Lake City’s gang problem and save the souls of local youngsters falling into the lure of the underworld.
“Youth who become involved in gangs always get out; the question is how,” writes Stallworth. “We had to do whatever was in our power to encourage them to leave gangs — if not avoid them altogether — before prison or death were the only exits that remained.”
Stallworth learned the lingo, customs, and culture of the Bloods and Crips, attempting to foster relationships with members. He also gave underage lawbreakers a one-time leniency pass by bringing them home to their parents rather than the precinct.
Yet Stallworth faced resistance from multiple fronts.
Many parents were skeptical of the anti-gang unit’s efforts, accusing Stallworth and his colleagues of biases or ulterior motives. Church officials refused to cooperate, with some insisting only non-white Mormons — primarily Polynesian believers — were the problematic ones.
But the most steadfast opposition came from police and government officials who would not act on evidence that a federally funded vocational youth program called Job Corps had become an incubator and pipeline for SoCal gang members arriving in Utah.
AMONG those ranks was Gary Nicolas “Babyface” Avila, who, according to Stallworth, used a fabricated L.A. persona to build his Sureños 13 syndicate into Salt Lake City’s largest Hispanic gang — and inspired several others to follow in its wake.
“Throughout the mounting violence, Clearfield Job Corps officials lied adamantly about gang members in their program, denying their contribution to the crime in Salt Lake City so that they could continue to get federal dollars,” writes Stallworth, who later testified in a Washington, DC, congressional hearing focused on Job Corps’ efficacy.
When Stallworth learned that gang culture was being transmitted through gangster rap, he familiarized himself with songs by the likes of N.W.A and Ice-T.
Despite initially being repulsed by the musical genre, he’d eventually develop an appreciation for its sharp social commentary and unbridled expression, becoming a rare police badge-wearing advocate for the artform during an era when politicians and other activists pushed for censorship.
“We must recognize the music as a tool to make us better cops,” writes Stallworth, who would bewilder peers, gangbangers, and, one time, even rapper Ice Cube, with a wordfor-word recital of N.W.A’s “F—k tha Police.” “Cops must listen to the songs, and if you fail to do so, shame on you.”
That self-education not only bolstered Stallworth’s work in his home city; it also made him an industry authority who would be called upon to share his expertise in high-profile legal cases in other jurisdictions.
STALLWORTH testified in the 1993 capital murder trial of Ronald Ray Howard, who killed Texas Highway Patrol Trooper Bill Davidson the prior year while listening to Tupac Shakur’s antipolice song “Soulja Story.” He later testified in a related First Amendment case in support of Shakur and his record label’s parent company, Time Warner.
“I had to explain why gangster rap was a valid sociological expression for inner-city minority youth,” writes Stallworth. “Yet I also felt an obligation to denounce the idea that the music could be legitimately used as a defense for killing a police officer.”
Stallworth ultimately became a champion for freedom of speech and artistic expression, and an opponent against the criminalization of minority youth — especially black children. His more than 30 years in law enforcement have given him a keen perspective on how to best protect and serve neglected communities.
Still, Stallworth bookends his memoir by addressing critics who fail to reconcile his former profession and his race — namely filmmaker Boots Riley, who, in a scathing critique, insisted that “BlacKkKlansman” is fiction.
“Blinded by their quest to assert their own Blackness, these radically militant individuals cannot accept me in the ‘collective club of Blackness’ that requires everyone else's sense of racial identity to pale in comparison with theirs,” Stallworth writes about Riley and his ilk. Elsewhere, he opens up about intimidating the “Sorry to Bother You” filmmaker during a run-in at the 2019 Directors Guild of Americans Awards. “I wrote ‘The Gangs of Zion’ not only to recount my experience of policing in a highly unusual context during a pivotal cultural moment,” Stallworth writes, “but also to inform the Booty Rileys of the world that I am a cop who understands American history is protective of his race, and takes unwavering stands for civil and constitutional rights for all people.”